(oil) plastic substitute

The cost of the plastic in the kit is relatively small compared to the other costs involved in the finished product setting on the hobby shop shelves. For example design, tooling, utilities, packaging, shipping and that "minor" problem of multiple markups by producer, distributor, retailer. Have you priced balsa or basswood lately?

Rick Clark

Resin doesn't have any petroleum products in it,does it? Of course with the styrene competition gone...they'd raise their prices...

As noted, the actual petroleum content of the styrene is small, and in fact there are other sources that can be used to get to the same point, such as coal, if not necessarily as conveniently. The real problem (and this will apply to resin or any other synthetic material) are the energy costs attendant to producing the material, transporting it, packaging it, and so on. This will be compounded by greater amounts of everyone's disposable income going to personal energy costs, thus potentially cutting the availablitiy of leisure-time dollars. Paradoxically, this might serve us well, since dinner and a movie (one evening) will end up looking like a pretty poor value compared with thirty-some-odd hours of enjoyment flowing from spending the same money on a kit and related materials. 'Course, the wife might not agree...

Consider this--if you have two thousand kits already, the petroleum in them is not going to cost you another penny. The obvious solution is to buy now, buy lots, and call yourself...a collector.

Mark Schynert

Yes I must have forgotten; never used balsa but I'm aware how much it costs. But a related topic: from a certain book (by Dennis Doty I think--maybe you're out there?) I learned that after the first oil crisis kit manufacturers added a milky-colored 'extender' to plastic, which didn't affect its qualities much unless you paint with cellulose. If you use anything more caustic than standard hobby paints on extended plastic, it can craze much worse. Does that mean by now all the plastic we use is extended? Anyone got recollections?

Seb

In thirty years I would still be trying to make a dent in the stash. :-)

Tom

Don't worry. As I see it, we won't suddenly run out of oil just like that. It will only become more and more expensive until one day it is too expensive to be used as fuel, but still relatively affordable enough to be used for other things. And with less demand the oil reserves would probably last much longer than a couple of decades.

Come on Tom! In thirty years you'll be trying to remember where the stash is :-)

Rick MFE I didn't know that I had bought one of those!

Mark commented:

Was it Orson Bean who told the old joke about the "Rip Van Winkle" type who was awakened from a long sleep, tried to call and check on his stocks and was told by the operator "Deposit $10,000 for three minutes, Pleeeeze"?

Rick

in article ck3bi4$cn4$ snipped-for-privacy@apollon.grec.isp.9tel.net, Seb at snipped-for-privacy@neuf.com wrote on 10/7/04 7:09 AM:

How about some good 'ol Regianno Parmagianno. Good consistency, can be carved, scraped, sanded, or grated into various shapes, and lasts a long time. And the trimmings can be used too!

mb

Milton questioned:

Next you are going to tell us that we can stretch the noodles for rigging? The meatballs for national markings? How about carved popcycle sticks? George Lee used to do that........

Rick

Well, ESM 72's check list feature allows me to know what I have, but finding it is definately a worry.

All (well, almost all) of my kits are boxed by kit manufacturer on shelves in the garage above the MAI Library. Unfortunately there is so much other stuff in the garage (there's a moped in there somewhere) that it's all hard to get to.

Once the house painting and repairs are completed the garage is next. We need a new garage door, but they have to get twelve feet back to install it. Not possible at this time.

Build. Must build. More and more and more.

Tom

I remember an article in Scale Auto years ago where a modeler scratched a firetruck and used uncooked sphagetti to make the ladder. Yum!

Holy Cow Man! Do you realize how many kits that is? I mean the cost of the door not the 12 feet. Twelve feet of garage floor space x 7 or 8 feet high is big bucks when full of good kits.

Rick VW parts into the garden shed, kits to the garage leaving just enough room to pull down the folding ladder to get to the Halloween decorations, raindeer cutouts, etc in the attic.

There was an Italian Market festival downtown here in June, and one of the exhibits was the cheese wheel carving. I hung around there for a while... :-q

Sister Mary

so every $80 resin kit goes towards another Benz for an america hater? :-Þ

Precisely why I'm resistant to this move to put so many consumer goods in plastic packaging. Tinplate can be recycled indefintely, plastic only so many times before it's useless. Makes me wonder how the soybean business is going. Henry Ford I was experimenting with car parts made from soybean extracts. The picture I've seen showed a very dent resistant trunk lid.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Does Don Holthaus own a Benz? A lot of resin products made here, you know.

Bill Banaszak, MFE